(Beyond Pesticides, August 20, 2008) The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) filed a lawsuit on Monday to uncover critical information that the U.S. government is withholding about the risks posed by pesticides to honey bees. NRDC legal experts and a leading bee researcher are convinced that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has evidence of connections between pesticides and the mysterious honey bee die-offs reported across the country. The phenomenon has come to be called â€ścolony collapse disorder,â€ť or CCD, and it is already proving to have disastrous consequences for American agriculture and the $15 billion worth of crops pollinated by bees every year.

EPA has failed to respond to NRDCâ€™s Freedom of Information Act request for agency records concerning the toxicity of pesticides to bees, forcing the legal action.

â€śRecently approved pesticides have been implicated in massive bee die-offs and are the focus of increasing scientific scrutiny,â€ť said NRDC Senior Attorney Aaron Colangelo. â€śEPA should be evaluating the risks to bees before approving new pesticides, but now refuses to tell the public what it knows. Pesticide restrictions might be at the heart of the solution to this growing crisis, so why hide the information they should be using to make those decisions?â€ť

In 2003, EPA granted a registration to a new pesticide manufactured by Bayer CropScience under the condition that Bayer submits studies about its productâ€™s impact on bees. EPA has refused to disclose the results of these studies, or if the studies have even been submitted. Bayer CropScience was required to submit studies on chronic exposure to honeybees, including a complete worker bee lifecycle study, as well as an evaluation of exposure and effects to the queen. The pesticide in question, clothianidin, recently was banned in Germany due to concerns about its impact on bees. A similar insecticide, imidacloprid, was banned in France for the same reason a couple of years before. These chemicals still are in use despite a growing consensus among bee specialists that pesticides, including clothianidin and its chemical cousins, may contribute to CCD. EPAâ€™s factsheet states that clothianidin has the â€śpotential for toxic chronic exposure to honey bees, as well as other non target pollinators, through the translocation of residues in nectar and pollen.â€ť

In the past two years, some American beekeepers have reported unexplained losses of 30-90% of the bees in their hives. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), bees pollinate $15 billion worth of crops grown in America. USDA also claims that one out of every three mouthfuls of food in the typical American diet has a connection to bee pollination. As the die-offs worsen, Americans will see their food costs increase.

Despite beesâ€™ critical role for farmers, consumers, and the environment, the federal government has been slow to address the die-off since the alarm bells started in 2006. (See previous Daily News of June 19, 2007 and July 19, 2007.) In recent Congressional hearings, USDA was unable to account for the $20 million that Congress has allocated to the department for fighting CCD in the last two years.

In the new book A Spring Without Bees, author Michael Schacker ties CCD to a historical pattern of EPA-issued emergency use permits (Section 18 under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act) for agricultural use of imidicloprid across the U.S. Mr. Schacker shows a direct correlation between states with CCD and the emergency imidicloprid uses permits. States without the use did not show the problem, with one exception.

â€śThis is a real mystery right now,â€ť said Gabriela Chavarria, PhD, director of NRDCâ€™s Science Center. â€śEPA needs to help shed some light so that researchers can get to work on this problem. This isnâ€™t just an issue for farmers — this is an issue that concerns us all. Just try to imagine a pizza without the contribution of bees! No tomatoes. No cheese. No peppers. If you eat apples, cucumbers, broccoli, onions, squash, carrots, avocados, or cherries, you need to be concerned.â€ť Dr. Chavarria has spent more than 20 years studying bees, and has published a number of academic papers on the taxonomy, behavior and distribution of native bees.

NRDC filed the lawsuit yesterday in federal court in Washington DC. In documents to be filed next month, NRDC will ask for a court order directing EPA to disclose its information about pesticides and bee toxicity.

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For the record currently there is no data that leads any “researcher” to beleive that the Bayer chems are the source of CCD. In fact a in depth analysis of honeybee combs from CCD hives found no traces of these chems.

Gabriela Chavarria quoted in the article has never published a paper on honeybees and appears to have no qualifications related to honeybee research.

So skip the hype in the article, the main point is, is the EPA hiding data from registration studies?

All of the independent and Bayer data suggests there is no negative effect on honeybees from the low levels of the chems found in plants.

We do need more data but my point is this news release from NRDC is rather misleading.